


Vanish

by gauntTwister



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Haunted House, Horror, Spooky, teen drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 04:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21265079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauntTwister/pseuds/gauntTwister
Summary: After being chased into a house that is rumored to be haunted, Danny must avoid not only his high school bully but the spirits that dwell within.





	Vanish

The house had been empty for as long as anyone could remember. It stood against the sky like a solitary tombstone, shutters clanging in the wind as if in angry refusal to be forgotten, and the shingles on the roof had found their numbers culled by neglect. Most of the windows, as they had been for decades, were boarded up; any color the siding might once have been was gone, painted over with sun-bleached gray. The lawn was brown and dead. Even the weeds were choked out, and the twisted oak in the yard was home only to the crows. 

The house had been abandoned years ago, but the living were not forgotten. It was not fondness with which they were remembered, nor was their absence the cause of sorrow; the house stood, as sullenly as it ever had, as a spiteful promise. The promise was not to quit - not to be forgotten, even as the living scuttled along the wrought-iron fence like insects, even as the markers in the graveyard slowly multiplied, even as the relentless march of time pulled another shingle out as one pulls a bad tooth. 

Despite a century, the house stood. 

The living regarded the decrepit structure with unease. Most kept their heads down if they needed walk along the fence or drive by it; some slid a furtive glance to the front window, as if expecting to see someone watching them back; still others avoided the street by it entirely in the hope that it might overlook them. 

The house, in fact, was biding its time. 

\- - - - 

The still night air kept the shutters silent when the trespasser came. The wrought-iron fence was like ice in his hands, unyielding to his will as he tried to force the gate open. He turned his back to the house, nose pink and fingers numb, and only dared to pause for one panicked moment before turning and darting along the fence. In the stillness, every heartbeat and footstep became clear. Above his own, he could hear those of his pursuers drawing closer. 

They'd been drinking, and he'd been caught knowing about it - even normally, it was rare that they let anything he said or did slide. After a six-pack and a handful of shots between them, he'd been targeted in an instant. Nevermind that they held him down and made him swear not to rat them out, and nevermind that they weren't the only ones at that party, either - they were after his head, and he was increasingly certain they wouldn't quit until they got it. 

Something flew past him and crashed against the iron - an empty glass bottle, and a second one hit him square in the back. Both of the brutes were yelling, words dulled by the cold and by five shots apiece, but he knew he couldn't outrun them on his own. 

He scrambled in desperation up the side of the fence, sneakers slipping on the iron and refusing him any purchase. He hauled himself over, nearly impaling himself on the decorative points of metal, and crumpled on the edge of the decaying lawn; knowing he couldn't afford to pause, he pushed himself back up to his feet. 

The hand that swiped at him caught him by the sleeve, and he was yanked back. He yelped, slamming into the bars of the fence as another hand found him; they were close enough that he could smell the cinnamon of the whiskey on their breath, see the white clouds that escaped them, hear one inebriated hiss an inch from his ear. 

_"You're dead, Fenton. Dead!"_

Danny tore himself away, shedding his hoodie in an instant and scrambling up the hill in his tee. He cared not about the chill night nor about the house, except that it would serve as the backdrop for his escape. The cries behind him were furious - _they'll never find you once we're done with you! you can't hide in there forever!_ \- but they were fading; he glanced up at the house again, foreboding and silent. Its windows were all boarded up except for one, but that one seemed to watch his every move like some accursed eye. Only once he was up on the front porch did he dare turn to look back at his pursuers: two hulking shadows pacing against the fence, watching his retreat with hungry eyes and fingers itching for a fight. 

He turned back to the house and let himself in. The front door was unlocked, and only once he tried to secure it behind him did he discover why; the mechanism, negated by rust, was in one piece, and declined to bar his entry at all. He abandoned it and crept ahead into the foyer, eyes tracing the grand staircase as well as they could in the darkness. 

The drunken shouts from across the lawn forced him to press on, and he turned to the hall on the left; the last door on the end was open, and he aimed for it. He slammed it behind him and pressed himself up against the once-fine wood, palms trembling and breaths short and tight in his chest. He allowed himself to sink slowly to the floor; only then did the pounding heartbeat in his ears begin to relent. Swiping at the corners of his eyes with one hand, he took a deep breath. 

_Don't you know what you've gotten yourself into?_

The rush of adrenaline that fueled him was fading, and underneath it was a hard lump of dread. He began to realize where he'd fled to escape the brutes' wrath, and why they'd come to such an abrupt halt at the fence. 

_They won't step foot in here. Why in the hell would you?_

The room before him was empty and stale. It might, once, have been a parlor; a disused armoire stood sullenly in the corner, and tattered curtains hung over the window. The rest of the furniture was gone, leaving echoes behind in the form of square-footed dips in the carpet, and a cracked mirror was propped up against the far wall. He stepped slowly to it and watched himself appear, tear-stained from the chase and red-cheeked from the cold. He pulled his arms closer about him in an effort to keep himself warm. It didn't help. 

A flicker in his reflection made him whirl around. He expected to see something - _something? like what?_ he wondered - but the room was empty. He held his breath and listened, half-expecting to hear two stumbling sets of footsteps coming after him, and knowing he couldn't hide if the door were to burst open. The hall, as well as the foyer beyond it, was silent. 

He crept back to the door again, stepping around the place where the sofa once stood as if he might jam a toe on it if he wasn't careful. _You shouldn't be here._ That thought picked at him, growing into a cold and crushing hand that reached deep and grabbed somewhere into his gut. He couldn't stay - of course he couldn't, he just had to escape those two drunken jocks from school, he really should be home, why had he even come here in the first place? Was this really better than facing them? 

The hall ahead of him was empty. In the parlor, the window had provided scarce light; further within the house, it was almost pitch-black. He could see the shapes of closed doorways as he went, and long-forgotten gas lamps on the walls between them, but any other detail than that was lost to the darkness. The space seemed to press in on him from either side, and when he stepped back into the foyer he realized he'd been holding his breath. He let it all out in a prolonged puff of mist, still deliberately silent as if he might be heard. Something, he felt, was wrong. 

The front door at the other end of the foyer slammed open at once, and he scrambled back into the shadows behind the grand staircase so that he wouldn't be seen. Both hands flew up over his mouth in an effort to catch a startled yelp before it escaped; without concretely meaning to, he sank further into the darkness and vanished completely. His eyes were on the open front door, and he dared himself to make a run for it as if that would force his body into motion. Something in him hesitated - _weren't there two of them? won't the other one be waiting for you out there?_ \- and he remained still. 

Something deeper in the house creaked as if in a yawn, and he crept slowly out from the place under the stairs where he'd been hiding. The shadows were reluctant to give him up, tugging with thin fingers to hold him for just a moment longer, and he kept his hands curled tightly together as if that might allow them some pale warmth. One of his pursuers had come inside to track him down; he could hear the slurred threats and uneven stomping footsteps from the opposite hall, and part of him thought that, if only he waited in unseen silence, he might be overlooked, and the bully might lumber home. 

The footsteps returned, and for an awful moment he thought he might be caught. He saw the long shadow coming back down the hall, and the worn metal bat that scraped against the hardwood floor; he was unseen - _but what if you're not? what if he finds you?_ \- and panic shoved him through the open doorframe into another room toward the rear of the house. 

This one had been a great dining-room. The table was in the center, with an even dozen tall-backed chairs surrounding it, and a crystal chandelier hung, mostly intact, from the ceiling. The cabinet in the corner, once filled with fine china, had been eviscerated; one of its doors was left wide open, and the glass front for the display was in pieces at its feet. 

He only paused for a second. His movements were giving him away - floorboards that tattled wherever he stepped, and his breaths were rising again in panic - and he pushed himself up into the air, knowing he wouldn't be reached. There was space for him on top of the empty china cabinet, and he settled into the triangle of darkness with no effort. 

His pursuer was only a few seconds behind him. He appeared alone, armed with the metal bat, and paused in the doorway with a frown. "I know you're in here, Fenton. You can't - can't hide from me." He stepped forward, catching himself from stumbling off his feet, and glowered about the room. To him, it was almost completely empty; the chandelier, broken on the floor, was the only decoration in the space. There was another door that led away, probably to the kitchens, and he knew that was where the scrawny runt had gone. His mouth echoed his mind numbly: "Can't hide from me. You're dead meat, Fenton. . ." 

Danny shrank further into shadow, both hands clenched on the lip of the cabinet as if that was the only thing keeping him grounded. The fingers of darkness were swirling around him again, and this time he let them. _Let them, if it means he won't find me._ He'd never seen the brute so violent before - hearing about the weekend parties was a regular Monday-morning occurrence, but he'd never witnessed any of it first-hand. Now here he was, curled up on top of a tall cabinet where he could only hope he wouldn't be seen. The voice of reason in him was chiding - _of course he won't see you; you're invisible_ \- but his eyes were still on the bat, as if it would come swinging at him without warning. 

The brute crossed to the other end of the room, passing through where the long heavy table should have been, and went into the kitchens. The door swung open for him, allowing a thin line of warm light into the space, but the light disappeared when the door shut again behind him. 

Danny wasn't breathing. He didn't dare - not when any sound he made would doom him - and he began to wonder if it might be better that he stay in the darkness a bit longer. Something in him seemed to want to stay, and he was aware of it only as he drifted slowly out into the air over the table again. The shadows pulled at him, and something in his gut pulled too. _Stay home tonight,_ it said, _you'll be welcome here._

He came back to his senses at once. What was he thinking? He shouldn't have stepped foot in the old house in the first place. He couldn't stay - he didn't _want_ to stay, he'd only run in because it was the one place he didn't think he'd have been followed. He realized that he thought he'd have been safer here. 

Would it really have been? 

The door to the kitchen swung open again, and he rose through the ceiling before he could be spotted. The second floor appeared brighter; the gas lamps in the hall, although unlit, threw meager glows that illuminated the wood paneling and closed doors. He realized that it was warmer here - he'd finally quit seeing his breath, although his fingers and most of his face remained numb. He set both feet back down on the soft carpet rug, careful not to make a sound, and crept on. 

One of the doors behind him swung open, making him turn. A shadow stood off-kilter in the frame, cast by someone in the room, and the only sound that came to him was the echo of a voice he couldn't parse. All of a sudden, he felt he was trespassing - not simply that he was somewhere he shouldn't be, but that he was distinctly _in someone's house,_ and that he couldn't allow himself to be caught in it. 

He could hear the drunken bully shouting again from downstairs, and the smash of the bat against glass made him jump. His eyes darted back to the open doorframe - the shadow had moved, and its owner swept out before he could think; it blew through him in a swirl of crinoline and soft footsteps, and pulled him a step back with it before vanishing down the hall. He was left reeling, his insides deathly cold, and a hard shiver wracked him. 

He took another step to steady himself, setting both hands palms-down on the little side table and doing his best to clear his head. For a fleeting moment, the faint smell of citrus lingered about him, vanishing just as the woman in the room had vanished. He took a deep breath, and ran one hand through his hair. It came to rest on the back of his neck, more out of habit than anything, and he gathered up his wits again. 

_What did you expect from a place like this? Didn't you know this would happen?_

\- - - - 

The bat swept across the countertop, spilling cups and plates which shattered on the floor. The dark corners of the room seemed to blur together, and if he turned too quickly his vision went entirely to static. He shoved all of that aside as well as he could, but there was no ignoring it; five shots had finally caught up with him, and they banded together into a burning knot in his stomach that kept him one crucial degree from dead-center. 

He knew that little rat was hiding from him. He'd been abandoned by his cohort - _fucking idiot, what's he good for?_ \- but he refused to quit. He'd tear that Fenton a new one. That'd show him. Show him for what, he didn't even know anymore. "Probably shot his mouth off," he said aloud, in an effort to recall. "Wouldn't be the first time." 

The kitchen, now ransacked, was dark. He stepped over shards of broken dishes, liking the crushed snapping sound they made under the soles of his sneakers, and paused in the doorframe that led back out into the dining-room. He knew that little bitch was in here - he turned about, putting out a hand and catching himself on the doorframe so he'd stay on his feet. The bat, still in his other hand, swung out a little for counterbalance. "Fenton!" he barked, as much as he was able to bark instead of just to yell, "Fenton, you better get your ass out here! You can't hide forever!" 

He couldn't keep that up. It was starting to give him a headache, and that was on top of how his stomach had begun to turn. _Gotta make this quick,_ said something in him, _and go find a place to throw up after._ That was as far as the reasoning went in his mind, and he shambled back out through the empty dining-room - empty except for the broken chandelier, anyhow - and into the foyer. 

One of the shadows down the long hall flickered, and he turned. A stupid smile played at him. "Bet you didn't think I'd see that," he mumbled, not having it in him to articulate fully, and he went down the hall after the runt. "Bet you didn't think I'd see that!" he repeated, giving the bat a couple of whacks against the half-rotten walls, "I'll tear you a new one, Fenton! I mean it!" 

The only open door led to an empty room. He stood, uncomprehending for a moment, in the frame. He'd seen that little turd dart by. Where was he? _Where in the hell was he?_ Something crept up the back of his spine, and his sluggish mind began to ask him: _what if he's gone?_ "Gone?" he asked, as if it needed to be said aloud to be valid at all. 

No, he decided, that couldn't be right. The little fucker was just hiding. _Obviously._ He turned back to the hall; one of the other doors must have been open, and he'd just run through there thinking he'd hide. _That's it. I'll still beat you, Fenton._

The sudden creak of footsteps made him turn back to the foyer. They were coming from upstairs - _how in the hell'd he get up there?_ \- and went right down the hall directly over his head. They were in no hurry, and he followed them as far as he was able. They faded as the hall upstairs went past one of the other rooms downstairs, and he looked through the darkness back at the empty space in the foyer. The footsteps were descending, and he crept out as quietly as he could. He held the bat in both hands in anticipation of a solitary debilitating swing - _yeah, that'd show him_ \- and kept his eyes on the staircase. 

It was vacant, even as the footsteps continued downwards, and he was certain that was the source of the sound. He hesitated - _maybe you're a little drunker than you thought_ \- and it suddenly occurred to him that he was alone. He hadn't been alone earlier, had he? Where had his buddy gone off to? 

The footsteps paused at the landing, and yet the space was empty. He tiptoed closer in near-full disbelief; he swung the bat once or twice across the bottom of the steps, as if he meant to find something there and just hadn't seen it in the dark, but his only answer was a chill draft that, his slow mind guessed, might have drifted down from upstairs. 

_Did it really? Don't you know where you are? Didn't you think this kind of stuff would happen?_

His gaze slid upwards, and he readjusted his grip on the bat. It suddenly felt inadequate in his hands, but he couldn't articulate why. He stared for a moment, but when he opened his mouth again the words betrayed his uncertainty. "Fenton? I know you're up there! Just - just come down here! I mean it!" 

The seconds of silence ticked slowly by, and an unbearable knot turned in his gut. He refused to think that the fucker wasn't up there - who else would have been walking around? - but he realized that it was no better than thinking that the shadow in the hall had been him as well. They couldn't _both_ have been, could they? Even a slippery little weasel like that couldn't be in two places at once. What, then, had just happened? He didn't want to know, and yet the question presented itself in his mind in obstinate refusal to be dismissed. 

_Didn't you know you wouldn't be the only ones here?_

"Fenton!" he tried again, hoping that concentrating on something easier to explain - or, at the very least, easier to hit - would deter him from thinking about the things that he couldn't explain at all. _Oh, you can explain it, jackass,_ his mind spat, _you're just scared. Say it. Scared._ "I'm not scared," he snapped, shoving away the cold tightness in his chest and doing his best to ignore the trembling of his hands. If he didn't acknowledge it, that meant it would go away on its own. "I'm not scared. Just - just drunk. Yeah." 

The chill passed and was gone from the air, but the footsteps remained. They meandered, somewhat faster than before, into a dark corridor that went behind the stairs and then disappeared somewhere to the left. They paused, as if their owner might have turned back to wait, but then in a flurry they were gone again. 

Dash's mind ground entirely to a halt. There was no way that Fenton could have done that, and words failed him. _What in the hell's happening?_ His grip on the bat tightened, and he could hear his own heartbeat begin to thump in his chest. Mouth dry, he called out anyway. "Fenton - are you in there?" 

There was no answer, and he knew he wasn't about to get one. After swearing up and down to beat the kid senseless, it was no wonder he wasn't going to get anything from him. _You should get out of here - let that little fuck fend for himself._ He turned slowly, and cast a glance back to the front door across the foyer. He remembered dimly that his buddy had stayed out there - _he said he'd wait and catch the runt if he ran out, remember?_ \- and part of him wanted to go and return to him. 

He almost did, right then and there, but something else kept him still. _Empty-handed?_ it sneered, _what'll he say?_ He'd never live that one down. He could almost already hear the Monday-morning conversation. _He was gonna go and catch the runt but that old house scared him off. Didn't think that scrawny Fenton'd turn out less chickenshit than you, Dash._ He couldn't stand it. He turned back to the hall, took a deep breath as if that would settle the knot in his stomach, and went on. 

The footsteps had faded away somewhere down the hall. The darkness relented, but only enough to allow him to see; gas lamps guarded the doorways, as if judging any decision he might make, and the air was stale and silent. It was all he could do to keep his breaths quiet, and the thick haze over his mind was of no help. He wanted to be fully aware - to be _clear_ \- but everything he perceived was off-kilter and blurry around the edges. Even the silence began to distort into whispers. Whispers of what, he didn't know, and although he paused and held still they declined to fall into clarity. 

He crept forward, unable to stop himself. The air was cooling again; a stiff breeze rattled the windowpanes on the face of the house, although none of it reached him. Even in his inebriation he knew what that meant - _you idiot, you think it'd stop being haunted just for your stupid fight?_ \- and yet he was compelled onward. The door to his right was ajar, and the whispers wafted out to him. That was there the cold was coming from. He could feel it. His fingers brushed up against the splintering wood, and his breath tangled up in the back of his throat. 

He didn't want to know what was in there. He really didn't. Even a somewhat limited imagination like his was weaving things together - a pile of dead bodies, like he always saw in the movies? or several figures with ethereal white ballgowns and no heads? - but the hand on the door was almost moving of its own accord now and he couldn't stop it. Perhaps, he thought, the figure would be less a wisp than a shadow, long and crooked and incomplete, and it would stare right at him. It would hang in the air, as if from a gallows, and when it would spring its maw would open. He was certain, in that instant, that it would catch him. 

In a last-ditch effort to banish the image from his mind, he croaked: "Fenton? Tell me that's you in there - " 

The whispers fell silent. The only thing left was his heartbeat slamming in his ears, and the door fell away under his fingertips. The room beyond it was bare. Two narrow windows stretched almost up to the ceiling, but both had been boarded shut; there was nowhere anyone could have been hiding, and the knot in his gut froze over. "Fenton?" his voice was shrill and tight, and he knew it would go unanswered. 

_This is your own fault, you idiot. You did this to yourself!_ He found he didn't have it in him to blame Danny anymore, even though it was his gut reaction to most things. He recalled, through a haze of cinnamon and rage, that he and his buddy had stumbled up the lawn after him. They were both swearing, and he'd thrown the last empty beer bottle at the siding of the house, thinking for one delirious instant that he'd knock the whole thing over. He'd kicked the door open - it hadn't been secured, and the hinges had almost pulled free of the rotting frame - but not before it had been made clear to him that he'd be on his own. _I'm not going in there,_ his buddy said, who had maybe sobered up a little more than he had, _be mad at me if you want. I'm not going in there._

The knot in his stomach turned over. He remembered, of course, what he'd said after that. He'd taken it like an invitation - _yeah, I'll be fucking mad! what kind of useless chickenshit friend are you?_ \- and he'd stormed into the house on his own. _You wanna wait out here so bad? I'll round him up. He comes running out and you wring that little bitch's neck._ He still had the bat in one hand, although it was mostly forgotten. He'd hoped it would have left a decent bruise. 

That, he remembered clearly. 

\- - - - 

The voice had grown distant, and Danny was glad for that. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could avoid the brute entirely. It couldn't be too difficult, could it? So long as he kept quiet and stayed out of sight, like he had in the dining-room, he wouldn't be found. He'd be able to wait it out then, wouldn't he? They couldn't outlast him - not when they were drunk, at least. Maybe then he'd get home. 

That wouldn't be too hard, would it? 

He stood in the hall outside one of the rooms - _the woman's room,_ he was certain, _who is she?_ He hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of her, and yet she had left behind a taste of her being when she'd passed through him. Not only had she passed; he could feel her still pulling at him somehow - the cold hand on his insides had returned, and was tugging in a direction he couldn't explain. Was he meant, then, to stay? Was that what she wanted? 

Was there something she wanted from him? 

He turned to the room where she'd come out. The door had been left ajar, and he crept closer; was he meant to find something she'd left? Would he know it if he saw it? He glanced once to where she'd vanished down the hall, half-expecting to see her, and then carefully pushed the door open. 

The room before him was lit by a single lamp in the corner. It stood on a dusty end-table by the bed, its pale yellow glow flickering across peeling wallpaper and an empty vanity table against the opposite wall. The corner by the window was dominated by a noble wardrobe; the window itself had been boarded up, and was further obscured by the drawn curtains. A squat bookshelf was squeezed perfectly into the space underneath it, and it was that bookshelf upon which his gaze lingered. 

The lamp flared suddenly, filling the room not only with light but warmth, and drew him in. The cold from outside, at last, was gone; sensation slowly began to creep back into his fingers, and his shivering finally quit. He turned about the room again, knowing it was impossible. He saw it almost in two separate states at once - threadbare carpet, the broken light fixture by the door, a heavy layer of dust on furniture that hadn't seen a polish for years - and at the same time, it felt whole and complete. 

It felt _lived-in._

The cold feeling in his gut eased. He knew he couldn't explain it fully, but _melancholy_ was part of it. Why was a place like this so empty? What had it been like when it was alive? He wanted, all of a sudden, to know - he _needed_ to know. Whatever was going on, and whoever the woman was that had passed through him - he was certain that he'd find the answers if he could get a glimpse further into the house. 

He went out into the hall again, glancing both ways to make sure that he wouldn't be spotted. _Of course you won't,_ he reminded himself, _no one's seen you this whole time. You're invisible, remember?_ Somehow, and despite that it normally didn't, it had begun to slip from his attention. _Of course you won't be found. Forget about it. Quit worrying. You've got other things to figure out now._

Some part of him hesitated to dismiss it just yet; he still had to be careful, and after a brief contemplation he turned to look down the stairs. The railing was the same cracked wood as the furniture in the woman's room, and he drifted downwards with one hand on it. The grand chandelier in the foyer glinted dully, and his eyes went to the front door of the house. He remembered, although it was foggy for some reason, that there had been two of those drunkards chasing after him. One was still outside, he'd speculated; as if it settled the matter, he swung shut and locked the front door. That, somehow, assured him, and the last thread of worry in his mind finally allowed both of his tormentors to be forgotten. 

He turned back to the house, as if to ask it what it wanted, but the pulling feeling returned before he so much as opened his mouth. Fingers of ice slipped over something deeper inside him - his heart, perhaps? - and kept him silent; it was both unbearable and irresistible, and one hand came up over his chest before he realized he couldn't push it away. The feeling settled in him, refusing to be dismissed, and drew him back again toward the stairs. It was as if the house was encouraging him - the chandelier brightened an extra degree, eschewing neglect; the banister on the stairs, newly polished, stood at rapt attention; from somewhere upstairs drifted a faint singsong hum. Danny beheld it all. Not one single thing was significant on its own, but it seemed as if the house had stood up after taking a fall and was brushing itself off. _Oh, don't mind the skinned knee. I'm alright._

_Now, where were we?_

Danny's eyes were on the landing at the top of the stairs. The woman was back - nothing more than a wisp of fog that suggested form, but he knew it was her - and the icy fingers nudged him closer. If _melancholy_ had been part of the feeling, _curiosity_ was another. Part of him already knew; _she's a ghost,_ it said, although it was a plain and unsatisfactory sentiment. Of course she was a ghost, but who _was_ she? Was she the only one that had remained from her time? 

Why didn't she form fully? 

That made him pause. He'd only tangled with the sentient dead a handful of times, and never on purpose - with threadbare control like his, he knew better than to start fights like those. Still, the spirits that he'd encountered had been brazen in comparison; even the shadowy formless ones were known to manifest in threes and fours and whisper over his head at night. For a specter like her to remain hidden - why? What did she want from him? Did she need his help? 

Would he even be able to help her? 

Something brushed by him and he whirled. It had suddenly gone cold again - a spike of panic struck him, and for an agonizing second his breath hitched in his chest. He forced it out in a puff of mist, knowing he wasn't alone. The wisp appeared as might a cloud of dust caught in a beam of moonlight, and only when it moved could he really see it at all - a slight turn of the head, and the suggestion of shoulders swaying back and forth in an off-kilter gait, as it made its way toward one of the empty halls. 

Danny, compelled, took a step after it. _How many of you are there?_ he wanted to ask, but his mouth had run dry and numb. _Come back - please, tell me why you can't form - maybe I could help you -_ none of it was said aloud, and yet when he stood at the end of the hall the figure was still. It was only a puff of mist, devoid of limbs or features, but he knew it was facing him. Did it see him, the same way he saw it? Could he coax it, he wondered, into becoming more tangible? He could feel it - the ghostly mechanisms in him turned together, pulling his mind slowly further from decay. Maybe then - _maybe then_ \- he could inch his way closer to the restless dead. 

As if to answer him, the figure swelled into a fuller silhouette. The body stretched taller; its arms slid away from the torso and hung at its sides; two dark circles deepened to become eyes, although the rest of its face remained blurred in the fog that surrounded it. Despite how it stared, its posture was lax, as if it might have had its hands in its pockets and a cigarette in its mouth. Perhaps, Danny thought, it didn't know what to make of him. 

_(What's a kid like you doing in a house like this?)_ he could almost hear it ask. It wasn't sound - not really - but if it were, it would have come in through a haze of static. It was like hearing the first recorded voice, still a decade before broadcast radio, and even tasting its echo left him speechless. 

The figure seemed to be inviting him - perhaps, if he dusted away another decade or two of neglect, he might get the answers he was looking for. 

\- - - - 

Dash stood as a silent shadow in the doorframe of the empty room. Everything was processed through a burning fog of whiskey and regret, but one thing in his mind was clear. He didn't want to be here. Dread had been creeping steadily higher in his chest since he'd crossed the threshold of the house, and had solidified into an unswallowable lump in his throat; _nevermind that Fenton,_ he wanted to say, _screw him, you'll get him on Monday._ He could do that - he could leave the awful house behind, and it would be like he'd never stepped foot in it at all. He'd forget those disembodied whispers, and how hollow the footsteps upstairs had been - he'd forget, or later he'd chalk it up to how drunk he was, and no one would have to know. 

From the front of the house, something slammed and made him jump. Everything in him bristled at once; it was terror - real terror, the kind that poured over him like ice and engulfed the struggling clarity in his mind - and for an unbearable moment he couldn't move. That bat in his hands was useless, and if he dared to show himself to whatever was waiting for him he'd be cut down. He could see the elongated shadow, the one with gangly fingers and an unseeable maw, crawling down the dusty old rug in the hall or maybe perching like a demonic gargoyle on the banister of the stairs. It would get him the second it saw him. That, in his mind, was certain. 

He had to get out. That, too, was certain, and it was the only thing that pushed him forward. He almost couldn't bear to breathe, and he was horribly aware of even the small sound of his sneakers against the floor as he crept, an inch at a time, back to the foyer. The hall faced the side of the grand staircase, and the rest of the space was only visible once he went to its end and turned; the second the front door came into sight, he'd make a run for it. No matter what else he saw - it would be that runt's problem then, and he'd go tearing out the door and across the lawn like a bat out of hell. 

That was what his sluggish mind told him. The second he could see the way out, he'd run. He'd never talk about the incident again. He'd keep his blabbermouth buddy quiet about it if he had to, and that would be the end of it. He peered around the corner; the front door, leaning shut, stood across the foyer and he ran for it. The bat was discarded as both of his hands made a grab for the knob, and without thinking he gave it a harsh twist. 

The mechanism, sealed by years of rust, refused to give in. He tried again, and then gave the door a panicked shove, but to no avail; the thing had been shut for decades and still held firm. His mind spun uselessly - _the hell happened it can't be locked how in the hell's it fucking locked_ \- and he whirled around, eyes darting between the shadows and the open archways and the landing at the top of the stairs. The house seemed to press in tandem with his heartbeat, thumping ever-louder, and he shut his eyes against it in a fruitless effort to hear himself think. _There's gotta be a back door to this place right - fuck that Fenton I shoulda left him in here by himself! - and Kwan's still outside goddammit how come he gets to sit this out?_ The chill swept through the space again and, knowing something had crawled out of the shadows and was waiting for him, and knowing it would be better not to see it, he slowly opened his eyes again anyhow. 

A thin line of light from an unseen glow pointed across the foyer. It was coming from somewhere in the front hall - _it wasn't doing that before_ \- and Dash lapsed back into blind terror. The gangly shadow was down there, he was certain of it - jammed in the crack between a door and its frame, or slithering under the worn rug and waiting to grab him, and he knew that the second he stepped foot in that beam of light it would get him. If he so much as looked down that hall, it would be there waiting for him. 

Despite it, he couldn't stop himself. He crept ahead - _but I just want to go home_ \- and paused at the very edge of the light from the hall. From right up against the beam, he could hear the whispers again; they were calling his name, he knew they were, and he slid barely enough into the glow to be able to see down the hall. 

The corridor itself was unlit. The lamps on the walls were still and empty, and yet the glow was coming from them collectively. Suspended between two open doorways was Danny; he floated, translucent and entranced, eyes unblinking and ablaze in green. His hands hung limply at his sides, and his fingers twitched in some unseen rhythm. 

Through him, lurking at the end of the hall, was the spindly shadow. Its eyes, soulless and white, were affixed on him, and his stared back; Dash beheld them, knowing he'd be seen but unable to force himself into movement. Everything in him was numb - the bat was forgotten in his hands, and the only faint spark of sound he could summon was hoarse. 

\- - - - 

"Fenton - ?" 

Everything shattered. Danny whirled around as if caught with a stolen diamond in his hand; he'd gotten only a bare glimpse of the house - what it was _supposed_ to look like, and how it felt before it had been forsaken - but all of it was gone in an instant. Instead, he was forced to acknowledge Dash, standing under the archway that separated the hall from the foyer, and in an unfolding moment of fuckor he realized that he _had_ been caught red-handed, a foot off the floor, marked by his own ethereal glow. His lungs burned - _haven't you been breathing?_ \- and he sucked in the cold air at once. "I - " _It's not what it looks like,_ he meant to stutter, but he knew he couldn't explain himself away. He glanced to the end of the hall but the specter had vanished. He turned back; Dash was like a specter himself, his face death-white and his edges blurring away into the surrounding shadows. When he moved, Danny realized he could see the wood paneling on the walls behind him. "Dash, what - how come you're - ?" 

When Danny reached out he took a step back, and he didn't seem aware of the words that were pouring out of him. "You're - what in the hell - you just - I can see _through_ you! - what's going on, what was that thing - ?" 

"Forget about me," Danny said forcefully, "What about you? Look at you, how did you do that, you can't really be - ?" He fell silent as he realized what was happening. _He's fading - you didn't think this place wouldn't affect him, did you?_ Dash had become part of the veneer of decay over everything in the house - cobwebs that dripped like fine lace over the decorative metal mounts upon which the gas lamps sat, and the colors in the rug that had dulled to a flat gray under years of dust - and Danny wondered for one horrible instant if that meant Dash would disappear completely. He spoke again, this time deliberately slow, and lowered himself back down onto the rug. "Dash, listen to me. Something's happening - I don't know what yet, but this place is affecting you." He paused to reconsider, and then added, "Maybe both of us." 

Dash, now that he wasn't on his own in the house anymore, began to calm down. Something told him he'd just made a great fool of himself - _running around in the dark like that? you idiot_ \- but seeing Danny there grounded him. It kept him from complete terror, but the crushing knot of dread refused to settle - perhaps, he thought, the fact that he could still see through Danny had something to do with that. "What do we do now?" 

Danny sighed. "I don't know." He was certain that Dash had seen some of his ghostly abilities; the best he could do, at this point, was to say that the house was affecting him too, and he'd hope that Dash wouldn't press him about it. 

He saw, too, that Dash had lost the bat. Even on a good day, Danny didn't like him, and part of him wanted to vanish into thin air and leave him to face the house alone. Maybe he'd get what was coming to him then, and Danny could seek out the spirits he'd seen. Then again, it was because of Dash that the specter had disappeared. If he hadn't been interrupted - if for one more second the spirit had lingered, he'd have gotten to see its face. Instead, Dash had come blundering up - _couldn't he have waited another minute?_ \- and ruined it. 

He glanced back at the end of the hall, as if the specter might have still been there, but the space it had occupied was dark. The tugging feeling was back; he knew he had to find those spirits again, with or without Dash. He thought, without anything else to think, that they needed his help. They were pulling at him, and he only felt it because he and they were alike - and that was why Dash _couldn't_ feel it. Of that, Danny was certain. 

He turned then to Dash. "People always said this place was haunted, right?" 

Dash hesitated. "What kind of question is that?" 

"The ones who lived here," said Danny, "They're still around. They've been here the whole time." 

"That's how a haunted house works, Fenturd," Dash snapped, having gotten enough over being scared to go back to the much more familiar territory of being angry, "What are you getting at?" 

Danny shot him a look. At school he stood little chance against the brute but somehow the house put him at ease; it spoke to the dormant parts of him that he didn't know were there at all, except now they were yawning and stretching and having a look around. _Well,_ said something in him, _don't you think you could take him, if you really had to? Wouldn't be too hard._ He was beginning to realize it wouldn't be. Just as Dash was always surrounded by other jocks at school, the hollow stillness of the house seemed to be at Danny's side. When he'd run in from the lawn, the place had given him a bad feeling; that was gone. In its place was the assurance that he'd be alright. He was in his element, and he wasn't alone. "You know, they're still people," he said quietly, "Just dead ones, is all." 

"The hell's that even mean?" said Dash, "You saw that shadowy thing too - are you trying to tell me it _won't_ tear our throats out if it finds us? And you're still - well, kinda-sorta there - and there was that whole glowy thing you were doing, and your eyes oh my god - " 

"Would you quit it," said Danny desperately, "I _know_ there's all this weird stuff going on, okay? I'm not stupid. But look, whoever's still here, I can feel it, and - " 

"This is just on account of your parents are ghosthunters, isn't it? You think you know everything now - ?" 

The feeling in Danny's gut grew sharp. _"Shut up."_ His voice was suddenly cold; perhaps he had fully realized that he could knock Dash down if it really came to it, and that it wouldn't go wholly undeserved; perhaps it was said in a moment of impulse and served only as a warning; perhaps something in him had finally snapped - _I'm not an idiot, and don't you dare treat me like one;_ perhaps the other spirits in the house weren't hiding away as much as he'd thought they were, and had decided to make themselves heard in that little lapse of temper. Whatever it was, it came and went in an instant, and Danny softened. He wasn't going to say _I'm sorry_ \- Dash really had deserved it - but he had been caught off-guard by his own sudden aggression, and failed to pinpoint exactly where it had come from. 

Dash looked as if he might cry. He'd seen Danny angry plenty of times - and would occasionally even piss him off on purpose for laughs - but for him to command like that, with no hesitation, was startling. He opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again. 

Danny cooled. _Where did that come from, all of a sudden?_ Weren't there better places to be arguing like that than a decrepit old house with ghosts in it? He couldn't expect Dash to understand - hell, even _he_ didn't fully understand yet - what was really going on. There were things that Danny was tuned to, like the subtle difference between a ghostly chill and a draft from the window, or the soft echo of things that humans could rarely hear, or the fingers of ice over his heart that had settled in, telling him he wasn't alone, and that _perhaps that was alright_ and _you're welcome to stay if you like._ No, he really didn't understand it. He just _knew_ things, and assumed that it was because he was straddling the line between the living and the dead. With no one to show him the ropes, was it really any wonder he hadn't gotten far? "Look, I think maybe - " 

"Something's wrong with you, man," whispered Dash, pale. "I mean _really_ wrong. Just look at you." 

Danny had drifted up off the floor again. He hadn't meant to - _think you can keep saying it's not you? that won't last_ \- and it took him a second to direct himself downwards. He glanced back at Dash, still translucent and uncertain, and he wondered if he could put a hand right through the side of his letter-jacket. How could he fix something like that? It was as if Dash went along with the rest of the house's decomposition; the clearer it became, the more brightly the lamps on the walls flickered. . . 

Danny realized that it wasn't Dash at all. It wasn't that Dash was fading, it was that _he_ was fading, disappearing into the life of the house a little at a time. Even as it dawned on him, one of the lamps was alight, and from somewhere beyond the foyer the whispers had started up again. His eyes turned from the lamp on the wall back to Dash - he seemed just that much more distant; that meant, to Danny's horror, that he was right. "Dash - ?" 

"Cut that out," said Dash, voice cracking despite his best efforts, and before he could think he took one stumbling step forward and made a grab for Danny's hand. "The hell're you doing? Don't leave me here - !" 

Danny could feel Dash's touch but there was no substance to it. The sensation was burning, almost-equal to the cold rush he'd felt upstairs when the ghost woman had swept through him, and he recoiled. "I can't stop it - _why can't I stop it?"_ He could feel the panic in him rising - _of course it wants you, you're half-dead already_ \- and even when he concentrated the best he could do was to keep his feet on the floor. 

_What if you disappear forever? What if you can't come back from that?_

The steady crackle of static began to creep into his periphery, despite how he tried to shut it out. _You're welcome to stay here; don't you want to meet those spirits you saw? now, what's a kid like you doing in a place like this?_ He had to shut that out, too. He willed the decay of the house to return, to swipe one hand across the side table and leave a trail in the dust, to catch _please, just a whiff_ of the whiskey on Dash's breath. "Dash, you gotta help me - _I don't wanna die here - "_

"Me?" Dash exclaimed, taking Danny's cue to panic, "The hell am I gonna do? I can't fix this! We gotta get out of here - " he cut himself off, remembering that he'd found the front door of the house somehow rusted shut. A moment of dumbstruck blankness overtook him, and when his eyes met with Danny's again he was quiet. "We can't - we have to find another way, it's like the place _knows,_ it won't let us out - " 

Danny interrupted him before he could get any further than that. "Don't say it! Just don't! There's gotta be a way out of here, right?" Not waiting for an answer, he turned and started back down the hall again. The gas lamps lit up one at a time as he passed, not with their eerily absent glow but this time fully lit, and Danny tried his best to ignore it. He glanced back at Dash, but he didn't seem to see it; he was following Danny, not because he really wanted to but because it was better than being alone. Although he wouldn't say it, Danny was glad for that. He didn't want to be alone either. 

The chandelier in the foyer looked like new. It hung, perfectly centered, over the round rug that dominated the floor of the space, and standing by a nameless portrait on the wall was the specter he'd seen in the front hall. At first, it had seemed plain, almost inviting. The tugging feeling in Danny's gut still told him it was, but where the spirit had appeared in light before, it now appeared in shadow. Its dark outline was clear; it stood facing the portrait, looking upwards at it, and its hands were nestled neatly in its pockets. One came out briefly, and the specter turned downwards as if to glance at something it was holding. 

Dash's burning hand came over Danny's arm. "You see it too, right?" he whispered, afraid to catch the thing's attention. Where Danny saw its human shape, Dash only saw darkness, an impossible void of black that was almost wholly without form. He could feel his mouth drying up again - he would have made a run for the front door, but he remembered what had happened, and part of him, although he'd never admit it, refused to leave Danny behind. 

Danny's eyes darted only for a second back to Dash. "Yeah, I see him," he whispered back. The spirit appeared to be waiting, but for what Danny didn't know - _and you don't want to find out,_ he told himself, knowing that was how he'd gotten sucked as far as he had out of reality. That was how the house worked; it showed him a fleeting glimpse of its past life, reeling him in with curiosity and sorrow and longing and other things he couldn't describe, and before he knew it he'd been pulled off his feet and invited to stay. _Invited,_ he thought, _how about coerced?_

He realized that should have made him angry. In the handful of times he'd gone up against the dead in the past, most of them had made him angry, one way or another - they'd threaten him, or threaten his friends - and yet somehow the feeling was lacking. It was as if he just didn't have it in him to be; _you think that isn't the house's doing too?_ suggested the little voice of reason, _look at you, it's got itself all tangled up around you. Still think you can cut yourself free?_

The specter turned, and Danny froze. He was aware of Dash sliding behind him, as if he could hide, and he knew if he took his eyes off the thing for a second it'd come at him. It was looking right at him - _sizing you up, probably_ \- and now that it was close he could make out the gaunt face and the suggestion of the suit it wore. When it addressed him it was with a static-encrusted voice and transatlantic cadence. 

_(Fancy seeing you here again. Don't you want to stay? We've got plenty of room for you)_

Danny could feel himself slipping further into its grasp. If only he could brush off the haze around its voice - _no, I don't want to, I want to go home_ \- he might finally learn its name. He tore his eyes off the spirit, forcing them on Dash instead; he was little more than an outline himself now, and Danny tried to focus. The man in the suit was dead. The chandelier was unkempt and off-center. The banister was dull, wrapped up in spiders and dust, and the rug had been eaten by the moths long ago. 

Only with his complete concentration did that sentiment stick. The rug faded back to gray, still reluctant to show its decay altogether, but that was something. Danny shut out the brightness around him, the misleading calm of the specter's voice, the gentle static of the jazz music playing from some phonograph upstairs that he knew - he told himself - was no longer there. He focused on Dash, knowing that was the only thing still grounding him. 

Dash seemed to realize it, too. To him, Danny had begun to fall into shadow; his edges were blurring away into thin air, but his body had gone mostly dark. His piercing eyes were still clear, no longer blue but the eery green of radiation, and to touch him had become impossible. The longer he'd stared at the ghastly void, the more he'd drained away - and Dash knew, or at least realized concretely, that he had little time left. His hand came up to Danny's shoulder, as if to take hold of him and pull him back down so he wasn't floating so high, but the only tangible feeling left was the cold. "We gotta go." 

Danny turned. Those impossible eyes were on Dash now, and when Dash recoiled Danny did too. His voice was distant and warped. _(I don't wanna die here)_

Dash took a step toward the stairs, his foggy mind remembering one detail through inebriated terror. "The front windows - there's one open upstairs, that's not all boarded up I mean - look, we don't have a choice, do we - ?" He didn't wait for an answer. The shadowy void had begun to crackle with static, and he made a grab for Danny's wrist as if he could still have taken it and scrambled upwards. 

Danny rushed past him, spiraling through the air as if he'd done the motion before, and only paused for a moment at the landing. He turned about him; only if he thought very hard about it could he even see the darkness of the house at all, and he knew he couldn't keep it shut out. He glanced down at his hands, fading away to wisps of white, and he felt the cold jolt of his heart skipping a beat. It hadn't skipped, he realized, it had _stopped,_ and he knew he'd run out of time. He turned in desperation back to Dash, who had barreled up the steps behind him. _(Which way)_

From each of the rooms in the hall came a tremendous groan, like the quaking breath of the house itself, and the lamps between the doors burst into flame. Danny threw both his hands up over his ears, but there was no blocking it; he could see the woman take shape before them, appearing in swirls of mist that solidified, forming the skirts of her dress and the ornaments in her hair and the pale skin of her arms and face. The face was warped and twisted, although her eyes were lifeless. She stood, fully formed, between Dash and Danny, and rounded on Dash first. _(You can't leave us!)_ she shrieked, and came at him not in malice but in desperation. One of her hands reached out for his - _(you can't leave us here!)_ \- but he flinched away and took a step back. 

Danny went after her before he could think. _(Hey! You leave him alone!)_ She was flesh and bone in his mind, and he made a grab for her hand, the back of her dress, anything to keep her from getting her fingers on Dash at all. He was a split second too late; missing her arm by an inch, he was aware that Dash was falling only as his shadow faded through the railing at the top of the stairs. 

Danny was taken over by instinct, and pounced after him. The unearthly intuition in him was in control; it knew how to grab ahold of Dash, even though he was amongst the living; it knew to wrap itself around him; it knew to pull him and Danny both out of tangibility a second before they'd have hit the floor in the foyer below; it knew to brace for the hard smack as they landed anyway, and only then did it relent. Danny lay in a daze, dizzied by the sudden rush as he'd lost control of himself, and the static of panicked terror began to fade slowly away. 

He pulled himself up all at once, and found Dash, dazed as he was, sprawled out on the floor by him. He was still moving - _oh thank god_ \- and Danny grabbed onto the collar of his jacket to pull him back toward clarity. _(Oh fuck come on please tell me you're okay just tell me please)_

Dash slowly propped himself up, the last of his own dizziness falling slowly away. He was clear again - clear-headed, and in full-focus - and he was glad for that. He could see Danny fully, too, and pushed himself up. _(I'm okay. I think. I feel okay.)_ He paused, glancing back up at where the railing had given out and he'd fallen. _(That's some crazy shit, Fenton. How'd you do that?)_

Danny turned to follow his gaze. It took him a second to realize it - the railing was broken but not in decay, and the space around them still glowed in a soft yellow. That hit him all at once. He hadn't saved Dash, as he'd meant to - he'd killed him. He'd wrapped himself around him and pulled him all at once from reality, and he knew it was too late for them. _(Oh, shit. Oh shit oh_ fuck) 

Dash got slowly up to his feet and brushed himself off. The house was suddenly alive around him, at least more than he'd ever seen, and he took a moment to turn about him. _(Whoa - is this what you saw the whole time? It's like it's right out of an old movie or something - )_

_(It's because you're dead, Dash,)_ said Danny, before he could stop himself. _(We both are. I fucked it up, man. I swear I didn't mean it - I thought I'd - )_

The woman upstairs was calling for them. Her voice echoed not like the dead but like the living through the empty space in the halls, and the pit of guilt and despair in his gut deepened. _(That's it. We're gonna be stuck here.)_

_(Are we really dead?)_ Dash asked quietly, _(can't you do something?)_

Danny shook his head, about to tell him _of course not, the hell am I gonna do?_ but he realized all at once that he might still have one trick left. He grabbed Dash's hand, offering no explanation except _(You gotta stay with me, I swear I'll explain everything)_

Danny transformed. The feeling was awful; the merciless kickstart of his heartbeat, the sudden jarring heat of returning to the living after having been pulled steadily into death, the fracture of everything in the house around him like a mirror swung at by a metal bat, the sudden rush of his own blood pumping again in his ears. He forced out his breath all at once, the knot in his gut turning over one last time in reluctance to come back to life so suddenly. His hands were trembling. Would he ever really get used to that feeling? 

More importantly - had he been able to take Dash with him? 

He looked over at the decayed corpse at his feet. The remains were skeletal and desiccated, and only a few grayed scraps of the letter-jacket he wore were still clinging to the shoulders and ribs. The skull grinned as if in smugness, and Danny knew he'd failed. 

He'd left Dash behind after all. 

\- - - - 

The house had been empty for as long as anyone could remember. It stood against the sky like a solitary tombstone, shutters clanging in the wind as if in angry refusal to be forgotten, and the shingles on the roof had found their numbers culled by neglect. Most of the windows, as they had been for decades, were broken; any color the siding might once have been was gone, painted over with sun-bleached gray. The lawn was brown and dead. Even the weeds were choked out, and the twisted oak in the yard was home only to the crows. 

The house had been abandoned years ago, but the living were not forgotten. It was not fondness with which they were remembered, nor was their absence the cause of sorrow; the house stood, as sullenly as it ever had, as a spiteful promise. The promise was not to quit - not to be forgotten, and not to forget. It coveted the precious force of life, and whenever the chance arose, it fed. 

The living, although none dared admit it, knew this. They regarded the decrepit structure with unease, and most kept their heads down. Those who didn't were foolish; perhaps they'd come in search of the history of the house, or perhaps they'd mean to provoke or study the dead inside. Perhaps they'd come stumbling up the lawn in a drunken stupor, and they'd realize their mistake too late. To the house, it made no difference. 

It was rare that one could enter the house and leave with their life. In sizable groups, there might be one or two survivors to warn the living about the dangers of the place; for two to run into a place like that, death for both was almost certain. Only because of a convenient snag in the border between the living and the damned was one able to escape at all. 

He was found, beside the long-dead corpse, by the drunkard outside. The door had swung open - the pieces of the mechanism had been jammed together by years of rust, and refused to stay shut. The drunkard had come in, worried for his friend, and had found the boy and the corpse on the floor in the foyer. The boy turned to him, tear-stained and trembling. _I tried to save him, I swear,_ he said, as if that was the extent of it. 

He should have known better. The house, sated for the time being, had fallen silent again, and he'd never be coming back.


End file.
